“If there’s no personal connection, it’s just a job, it’s just a list of tasks,” said Chris Collins, an assistant professor at Cornell who runs a human resources research center. service, no loyalty to the company. He compares isolated employees to contract workers who can do the same tasks for different companies. People can still feel productive, even satisfied, working alone. But when work is transactional, it’s very easy to exchange one laptop for another. “It’s not surprising that sales are so high.”
Tech can help?
In essence, workplace culture is defined by shared norms and habits. Something as simple as offering free coffee can create an office routine for employees to meet or socialize. At their best, those little interactions open the door to friendship or partnership. Even if they don’t, they still give people the feeling that they belong to a larger group.
Remote working challenges these office routines and rules — when people arrive, when they leave, what they wear, and who they interact with. The flexibility to work on your own time, and wear sweatpants if you so choose, is one of the big advantages of remote work. But it can also leave employees feeling isolated, unsure of when it’s appropriate to ping a coworker or how to start a conversation about something unrelated to work. Since remote work doesn’t seem to be going away, there are people trying to solve this problem — and make money from it.
One such company, Cleary, creates a “digital lobby” where people can ask questions, post announcements, and congratulate each other on victories in the workplace. It acts like a Facebook feed, personalizing updates for each employee. “When you have 50 people, but they are in 50 different home offices, you actually have bigger communication challenges than if you were in a 300 person company,” says Thomas Kunjappu, co-founder of the company. , where everyone is in one place,” said Thomas Kunjappu, the company’s co-founder. It also provides a place for employees to share personal information about themselves, and ice-breaking reminders that can be used before meetings.
Another “virtual office” platform, called Tandem, encourages employees to share updates throughout the day, so colleagues can know when they’re free to chat, when they’re walking the dog, or when they are at work. Employees have a duty to volunteer their statuses, but Tandem also integrates with platforms like Asana and Google Docs, so coworkers can automatically see what someone is up to at the moment. Like Slack, Tandem is designed to let people talk to each other more often while working. But unlike Slack, it’s designed to show when people are actually present — not just when they’re online.
ONE promotional film for Tandem recounts common complaints about distributed work. “In the office, you just look over and say, ‘Hey, quick question’ and get the answer,” said one woman sitting on the bed with a laptop computer. — oh, that’s right, I’m all alone.” The implication is that a software product can make people feel closer to each other.
Yet another startup, Donut, aims to “create human connections in the workplace.” Donut integrates with Slack to add new ways for remote workers to socialize, including a cheeky water-cooled channel where people who don’t know each other can bond over chat prompts. (For example, “What’s your favorite form of potato?”) While other software tools focus on strengthening the bonds between people who have worked together, Donut is designed for who do not work together. There’s less reason to approach a colleague in another department, and it’s awkward to do so virtual. In the #donut channel on Slack, the Donut bot randomly pairs co-workers and sets them up for virtual chat.
